


Push my button anytime

by twistedmiracle



Category: Check Please! (Webcomic)
Genre: Chirping, Don't copy to another site, M/M, Misunderstandings, Pre-Slash
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-23
Updated: 2020-02-23
Packaged: 2021-02-28 06:34:06
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 1,999
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22869421
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/twistedmiracle/pseuds/twistedmiracle
Summary: Jack and Bitty go for a drive. Jack and Bitty find each other profoundly distracting. Jack and Bitty are good at making assumptions. Jack and Bitty are bad at challenging their own assumptions.
Relationships: Eric "Bitty" Bittle/Jack Zimmermann
Comments: 16
Kudos: 101





	1. One

**Author's Note:**

> Many thanks to SunshineAndaLittleFlour, who is a super great beta and possibly even a better writer than a beta. Not sure you believe me? Check out the amazing Brunch Is series, beta'd by moi!
> 
> I feel that I must be honest and say this fic is absolutely inspired by my beloved, who, shall we say, drives stick shift exactly the way Jack does. And damn, is it distracting! (And inspiring. ;)
> 
> Also, this title from yet another Billie Eilish song because I am enjoying being predictable and also she writes great lyrics fuckin’ sue me. ;)  
> (I am absolute proof that Eilish is not just for teenagers.)

“Come on then, Bittle," Jack said. He was standing in the kitchen doorway, arms crossed over his broad chest. He looked somewhere between impatient and amused.

“Hold yer horses,” Bitty snapped, carefully pulling Ransom’s celebration pie out of the oven. Ransom had somehow managed an A+ on a group project with a set of people that had been driving him utterly spare, so Bitty had baked his favorite, Honey Peach. He’d really struggled to find good peaches in Massachusetts, too. Eventually he’d settled for some that had clearly been grown in a hothouse. At least they weren’t canned.

Bitty delicately placed the pie on the counter. Then he carefully composed a text to Ransom letting him know when the pie would be cool enough to eat. He could have been faster about it, but…. He was equally looking forward to this errand and not. Alone time with Jack felt… fraught. But it only made sense for him to be the one to go along on this drive. Who better to accompany the captain when they needed to choose a catering hall and menu for the end of year banquet? Normally Samwell catered these things, but with Smethwyk Hall torn apart for renovation, teams and clubs all over campus were struggling to find decent places for their end-of-year banquets. Hockey had maybe waited a bit too long, and Jack was driving them out to Foxborough today to check out a potential place that was available the day they needed.

Bitty loved being alone with Jack. Of course he did. But he also hated it. Jack might be clueless, but eventually even he would see the huge crush Eric had developed on him, and then he wouldn’t want to have anything to do with Bitty ever again.

Eric filled a huge travel mug with coffee, mostly to have something to do with his hands while he sat in the passenger seat. On the way back he would probably be taking notes on the place they were checking out and the foods they had tried. He’d never ridden in Jack’s truck before. Normally they walked everywhere. He wondered what sort of driver Jack was. Stultifyingly cautious, probably. He smiled at the thought. 

Slowly putting plenty of flavoured “cream” and a couple of spoonfuls of sugar in his mug, stirring it until he liked the color, he ignored Jack’s tapping foot, until there were no more excuses to make and Jack was ushering him out the door and toward his huge black “truck.”

“I don’t know how y’all can call this thing a truck,” Bitty said as he clambered into the passenger seat. It was so damn far off the ground. “Coach, my Daddy, I mean, he has a regular ole’ pickup. He hauls big things in it. It isn’t even small! It has an extended cab and it can fit three football players besides Coach! But this thing,” Bitty made a scoffing noise as Jack turned the engine over and looked over his shoulder before pulling slowly away from the curb. “This thing is… a behemoth!”

“Mm-hm,” Jack said as he shifted into second gear. They headed down the main road toward the highway. “It’s a truck, Bittle.”

“You have to admit it’s a really big one, though.” Bitty took a tiny sip of his coffee and frowned at it as Jack gave him a distracted, bemused smile. Despite having taken the creamer right from the fridge, his coffee was still a little too hot.

Jack had shifted into fourth already, but his hand was still on the gear shift lever. Bitty watched Jack wiggle the knob, then spread out his hand and run his palm over the top. Then he wiggled it again. Apparently he was the kind of driver who liked to mess with it. Bitty looked at Jack’s hand out of the corner of his eye. Jack really wasn’t just lightly resting his hand on the gear shift. He was downright _fucking_ with it. 

The last time Bitty had seen someone do this, it was a Defense player on his high school team, a girl so butch people were a little politely surprised to learn she was fully heterosexual. Danielle was the sort of driver who could _not_ stop _fussing_ with her gear shift, and from the moment her parents gave her that used yellow Ford Focus for her sixteenth birthday, she had wanted to drive everyone everywhere, so she’d dealt with plenty of teasing. 

Bitty couldn’t help but sit in Jack’s truck and remember the things teammates would say to Dani as she drove, because apparently Jack was the exact same sort of driver. Except Dani’d had a boyfriend, and the idea of Jack ever having a boyfriend was laughable. 

“Bet John loves _that_!” Bitty could almost hear Cameron saying again, as though he were still seventeen, heading to practice in a tiny yellow Ford stuffed with five teenage hockey players.

“What?” Dani said, sounding distracted. Her thick blond braid fell over her shoulder as she turned conscientiously to check her blind spot. It was fully a twenty minute drive from the high school to the rink. They had to go from the center of town way out to the edge, practically the next county. 

“Yeah,” Spencer had said from next to Bitty in the back seat. They had all noticed, apparently, the way Dani liked to fiddle with her gear shift. “John is either a really lucky guy, or he has the bluest balls in town!”

“Y’all!” Dani had yelped, offended and embarrassed. “Quit that!”

“I don’t know, looks like you really know how to handle a stick…”

“We all knew that from hockey, of course,” Bitty had interjected, too uncomfortable to be explicit but wanting to participate. 

“Exactly,” Cameron agreed. “Hockey, where Dani plays... D.”

“Big D,” Ashleigh had smirked.

“With Dylan, your Big D partner. Who can also handle a stick real good. Hey Dani, is John jealous of Dylan?”

“Y’all, _quit_ ,” Dani had bitten out, her cheeks bright red. And they had, that time. 

But now, there was Jack, stroking up and down his gear shift lever. Wiggling the slightly bulbous head. Rolling his palm over the top. Slowly. Bitty wondered if Jack handled his _own_ ‘stick’ anything like… 

Bitty was going to die.

Soon.

Worse, Jack looked over and saw Bitty was staring. “You unfamiliar with stick, Bitty?” Jack asked, apparently innocent of all irony.

“Oh, no, I know how to drive st… uh, standard shift.”

“Cool,” Jack said, still perfectly calm, and still messing around with that incredibly phallic gear shift lever. Now he was _stroking it with his fingertips_. “Maybe you can drive us back to the Haus, after. I expect I’ll want to write down a lot of notes.”

“Uh, ok,” Bitty said dumbly. He shifted uncomfortably. Why had he worn skinny jeans today?

“And we both have class in two hours, so it will save time to have one of us write while the other drives.”

“I could do that, Jack,” Bitty said, only half wanting to spare himself the torture of watching Jack play with his — apparently — favorite toy.

“Maybe,” Jack said, and he gave Bitty an insouciant smile as he continued to stroke his damn gear shift knob. “Only, I’ve noticed, I have trouble with your handwriting sometimes.”

“Are you saying my cursive is messy, Mr Zimmermann?” Bitty demanded. “Rude!”

“Ha,” Jack said. “I wouldn’t dare. Hey, when do I get off the highway?”

“Oh, let me check the GPS,” Bitty said, at least somewhat grateful for an excuse to look at something besides Jack’s still-active right hand.

It was a long trip to the Foxborough catering hall, or whatever the hell it was called. Bitty was so relieved when Jack parked near the door and turned off the truck that he damn near sighed out loud in relief.

He barely looked at Jack the whole time they were inside.


	2. Two

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> (Jack’s pov when Bitty drives.)

Jack never really paid that much attention to the way other people drove, even if he was letting them drive his truck. 

Today was proving to be an exception.

He’d noticed how uncomfortable Bittle was on the way to the catering hall, and — despite what he had told his winger on the way there — handwriting had nothing to do with the reason he’d handed Bittle the keys as they’d approached the truck after their tasting appointment.

He figured Bittle was one of those guys who don't like to give up control and let another man drive. Plenty of hockey players were like that, in Jack’s experience. 

“So I thought the beef wasn’t that great, but the chicken and that veggie pasta thing were both really good. You?” 

“Yeah, and the desserts were all good.”

Jack dutifully wrote this down, noting it was “High praise, Bittle!”

“You noticed it was all cake and no pie,” Bittle said with some bite. Then he laughed.

Jack gripped the pen tighter and looked at his notes again instead of Bittle’s rosy cheeks.

Jack had not anticipated not being able to stop noticing the way Bittle… handled a stick. And handled it _well_. Jack knew he tended to fiddle with his gear shift. He liked driving well enough, but American highways could be pretty dull. Bittle, on the other hand, did not fidget with the gear shift lever. He just grabbed it and made it work. He was also one of those drivers who downshifted instead of using his brakes, so he was constantly manhandling the damn thing. To get them back on the highway, Bittle had shifted up and down over and over. The parking lot was large, and then there were some red lights, and then they got a little turned around because Jack gave Bittle bad directions because he wasn’t doing a good job of reading the instructions on his phone because Bittle’s hands were surprisingly large for such a small man, and he moved so economically and relentlessly and Jack really didn’t know why on earth that would distract him. Except… he did know why. He honestly did. He just didn’t want to think about it.

He wrote down that they shouldn’t order the beef.

Which was unfortunate. Jack liked beef.

He felt his cheeks warm and took a moment to look out the window, but it was just the highway back to Samwell. The only interesting thing around was Bittle. Driving Jack’s truck. Driving it well.

He baked well. He played hockey well. He drove well. He probably did other things well, too.

“Do you think we need to offer anything to drink other than Coke and coffee?” Jack asked, deliberately refocusing.

“You know how often Chowder still drinks milk,” Bittle said. “And I thought their iced tea wasn’t bad.”

“For northerners,” Jack said, amused.

“It’s like you’ve met me,” Bittle said, clearly pleased. “Oh, there’s our exit,” he added, and pulled smoothly into the right lane and then onto the ramp.

By the time they were in the Samwell parking lot closest to their 1pm classes, Jack couldn’t remember much of anything about the Foxborough Hall. All he could think about was Bittle’s hands, his smooth, confident driving, and the way his cheeks got all rosy when he laughed.

“Uh,” Jack said when Bittle held out the keys and smiled at him. “Are you doing anything after class? We could, uh, walk to Annies and, uh, talk about the menu some more.”

“Sure, Jack,” Bittle said. He looked pleased again. “I’d like that.”

Jack grinned, feeling butterflies jump in his belly. He’d asked Bitty out! He’d done it!

Bitty fixed his backpack over his shoulder and turned to go. “I’m your man if you need opinions about food. I’m sure you need good advice about where to bring all the pretty girls, right?” 

Bitty headed off to class as Jack’s elation sunk into his shoes. Shit. He hadn’t asked Bitty out at all. 

(In order to ask a guy out… he maybe had to be… out?)

**Author's Note:**

> onetwistedmiracle on Tumblr. come over, say hi :-)


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